There are certain Broadway shows that weren't exactly hits but they had too much going for them to be written off as flops. More to the point, people who love their better aspects keep feeling that the show can be "fixed" to bring the weak elements (usually, the book) up to the level of the good elements (usually, the songs). A few of Mr. Sondheim's faster closures — especially Merrily We Roll Along — particularly entice those who think they'll find the magic alteration or interpretation that will unflaw a flawed masterpiece. And I don't know how many times I've heard that someone is reshaping or wants to reshape Mack and Mabel or Minnie's Boys or They're Playing Our Song or several others.
On a Clear Day You Can See Forever opened in New York on October 17, 1965 for the first of 280 performances there. That's not a terrible number but there seems to be a consensus that audiences weren't wild about it and that it only lasted as long as it did because of a big advance sale…and the big advance sale was because its book and lyrics were by Alan Jay Lerner. Lerner's two previous shows were Camelot and My Fair Lady and in between them, he'd done the movie, Gigi. So a lot of folks raced to grab tickets for his next musical before it even opened. Once it did, mixed reviews and word of mouth slowed down the stampede to the box office.
It did manage a movie sale, plus you have that wonderful title song that people love a lot…so it's remembered and it gets revived often…and revised officially and unofficially. The feeling seems to be that the songs are great but the book is lacking. Lerner himself presided over several different stage versions, plus he changed things around a lot for the 1970 film. In 1980, his last (I assume) version of the script ran a few weeks down at the Music Center in Los Angeles with an eye towards going to New York if it clicked. It didn't. It had Robert Goulet and Joanna Gleason and they were very good and the songs were very good…but the story just seemed to not excite anyone, at least the night I saw it. Yet another new version is reportedly heading for Broadway later this year with substantial revisions to the book, this time not by Mr. Lerner, who died in '86. Let's hope it works this time.
The following is a 14 minute sampler from the original production with Barbara Harris and John Cullum. The man doing the introducing is Cyril Ritchard, who's probably best known for playing Cap'n Hook to Mary Martin's You-Know-Who. This is from an episode of the Bell Telephone Hour TV show broadcast February 27, 1966. That would have been around the time the advance Broadway sale was petering out and the show was starting to have a lot of empty seats so I offer the following theory…
Lerner's previous show, Camelot, received very mixed (and a few hostile) reviews when it opened but it too coasted along on an advance sale. Writing My Fair Lady can buy you an awful lot of good will for a time. During the first few months, a lot of folks reportedly walked out on Camelot or didn't even use the tickets they'd purchased…but those who went and stayed saw an increasingly improving production. Most shows don't change much after they open. If it's a hit, no one wants to tamper. If it's not, it usually closes before major renovations can be done. Because of the advance though, Camelot had the rare opportunity to stay open while it was reworked.
Then came what Lerner later called "The Miracle of Camelot." He and his then-collaborator Frederick Loewe were to be honored with an entire hour of The Ed Sullivan Show devoted to their work. At the time, it was not customary to show much of a current Broadway production on TV for fear that people would think, "Well, I've seen the best moments…no need to buy a ticket." With the box office staff at Camelot getting awfully lonely, Lerner and Loewe decided they had nothing to lose so they offered Ed a large chunk of Camelot, as performed by Julie Andrews, Richard Burton and the aforementioned Mr. Goulet. The next day, the box office employees weren't the least bit lonely and those who saw the improved version spread the word that the show was pretty darn good. It wound up running 873 performances and there were big tours and the cast album was a smash. Lerner credited Camelot becoming a hit to the gamble of doing so much of it on the Sullivan program.
So anyway, my theory is that this was his attempt to do the same trick with On A Clear Day. It didn't work as well and the show closed June 11 but maybe this bought them four more months. I'll bet if the whole thing had been as good as these fourteen minutes, it would have run a long, long time…